Russian Bay.ru Unveils Dostami Express

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Russian site Bay.ru announces Dostami Express, a service designed to help Russians to more quickly and easily receive packages from abroad. We are told that Bay.ru has invested $700,000 (545,000 Euro) over the past 6 months in developing partnerships, technology, facilities, and hiring operational staff for the new service. In commenting on the launch, company Head of Representation for Russia and CIS Maxim Andryukhin says that any serious retailer in this market, be it KupiVIP, OZON, or some other player, needs a best-of-breed delivery service or else they’re “toast”. Thus, Bay.ru has been actively developing a service which it claims to be 46% cheaper than Express Mail Service (EMS) and capable of delivering packages from the United States to Moscow or St. Petersburg within 7 days. Bay.ru further states that those who select Dostami Express as a shipping option will be able to track their order, much as you would with other shipping companies.

Bay.ru itself is not new, as it was established in 2007 as a site which would allow Russians to more easily obtain goods from abroad. According to a profile from last year on Bay.ru, which is strangely located in Skokie, Illinois (just north of Chicago), the service was created by Russian ex-pat brothers Anton and Gene German after receiving countless requests from friends and family to bring back coveted items from the United States. Realizing that there was an opportunity for creating a store which eased the process of purchasing these goods by Russian consumers, they built a company which has since expanded to 55 employees (based on information from an article on FastCompany last year), receives 100,000 unique daily visitors to their site, and have a predictable turnover of $75 million (58,4 million Euro) for 2013.

In discussing their competitors, company CEO Aaron Block said that Russian Post has long been the preferred method for shipping and that they believe that this new service will act a faster and cheaper alternative. Gene German says that they expect to ship 50% of their orders through Dostami Express by the end of 2013 and that this service will complement their current work with USPS and Russian Post. Earlier this year, we did a post about SendMeBox, an Russian online retailer which also hopes to make it easier for Russian consumers to order items from abroad. That service, which is under development by online retailer Newmans, claims that it will offer 100 million goods from 50,000 stores, but has to officially launch.